Activists hold pictures of Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who was arrested after co-authoring a bold manifesto urging civil rights and political reform in China.
Posted on 10/08/2010 6:43:42 AM PDT by WebFocus
Liu Xiaobo, a pro-democracy activist, won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Friday for his decades of non-violent struggle for human rights in China. Beijing was not impressed. Mr. Liu is currently in a Chinese prison serving out an 11-year sentence as the lead author of Chapter 08, a manifesto calling for free speech and multi-party elections.
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From NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130420244&ps=cprs
EXCERPT
Imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for using nonviolence to demand fundamental human rights in his homeland. The award ignited a furious response from China, which accused the Norwegian Nobel Committee of violating its own principles by honoring “a criminal.”
Chinese state media immediately blacked out the news and Chinese government censors blocked Nobel Prize reports from Internet websites. China declared the decision would harm its relations with Norway - and the Nordic country responded that was a petty thing for a world power to do.
This year’s peace prize followed a long tradition of honoring dissidents around the world and was the first Nobel for China’s dissident community since it resurfaced after the Communists launched economic but not political reforms three decades ago.
Liu, 54, was sentenced last year to 11 years in prison for subversion. The Nobel committee said he was the first to be honored while still in prison, although other Nobel winners have been under house arrest or imprisoned before the prize.
Other dissidents to win the peace prize include German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky in 1935, Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov in 1975, Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa in 1983 and Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991.
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The Nobel committee cited Liu’s participation in the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing in 1989 and the Charter 08 document he recently co-authored, which called for greater freedom in China and an end to the Communist Party’s political dominance.
Chinese authorities would not allow access to Liu on Friday.
His wife, however, expressed joy at the news. Surrounded by police at their Beijing apartment, Liu Xia was not allowed out to meet reporters. Instead she gave brief remarks by phone and text message, saying she was happy and that she planned to go Saturday to deliver the news to Liu at the prison, 300 miles away.
Hong Kong Cable Television quoted her in a Twitter message as saying that Liu will draw encouragement from the award and she hoped to go to Norway to collect the prize if he could not.
“I believe that after the award, more people will put pressure on the Chinese side,” the message quoted her as saying.
It was not clear if Liu himself had been told about the Nobel.
China’s Foreign Ministry lashed out at the Nobel decision, saying the award should been used instead to promote international friendship and disarmament.
“Liu Xiaobo is a criminal who has been sentenced by Chinese judicial departments for violating Chinese law,” the statement said. Honoring him “runs completely counter to the principle of the prize and is also a blasphemy to the peace prize.”
It said the decision would damage bilateral relations between China and Norway.
In China, broadcasts of the announcement by CNN were blacked out. Popular Internet sites removed coverage of the Nobel prizes, placed prominently in recent days for the science awards.
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He did more for peace than Obama, Arafat, Carter or algore. Glad to see some sense returning to the Nobel committee.
Looks like the Nobel committee picked someone this year who has actually done something, rather than someone who’d done nothing, as was the case last year.
Hmmmm....giving an award based on merit rather than potential. What a concept.
RE: .giving an award based on merit rather than potential.
I find it interesting that when the Nobel Committee awards the peace prize to a person, the people who usually call the award ridiculous and un-merited are the awardee’s countrymen.
Liu Xiaobo’s award is being condemned by the Chinese government. We in the USA just laugh at our 3 latest peace prize awardee’s — Gore, Carter and Obama.
I also remember the Japanese laughing at the award given to their Prime Minister Eisaku Sato ( They called it -— OKASHI (strange in English)).
A large number of Ghanans criticized the award given to Kofi Anand calling it “totally undeserved for someone as corrupt as this man”.
A large number of Guatemalans protested Rigoberta Menchu’s award warning people that she was a liar and her story, which many thought was true, was FICTITIOUS (later proven right ).
And on and on it goes...
Also, what are the odds that the Communist authorities find a way to confiscate the substantial cash award that comes along with the prize. The "clue" is the statement by a commie authoritarian where he makes reference as to where the money "should go."
BTW, I'll bet Bwaney Frank and Chris Dodd are crying on each other's shoulders right now that they didn't get a shared Nobel Prize for economics.
Leni
Pffttt.. what did this yokel do that Obama didn’t do in his first 2 months in office? If the entire committee weren’t filled with right wing extremist fascist racists then Obama would have won this year’s prize. Why just last week he apologized to Guatemala.. and what was Liu doing last week? Just hanging out eating free food.. lame. so very lame! (/s for those with no abiliity to sense sarcasm)
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